Amiri Baraka, Poet and Playwright, Dies at 79

Amiri Baraka, the poet, playwright and novelist, has died after he was hospitalized last month in Newark. He was 79 years old.

Celeste Bateman, his agent since 2005, confirmed the news and said she spoke with Baraka’s wife. She had no further details at this time.

Baraka, born Everett LeRoi Jones and formerly known as LeRoi Jones, was a prominent African-American writer and activist. He was born on Oct. 7, 1934 in Newark, N.J. His writing explored topics ranging from jazz to the Civil Rights movement. Among his most influential works are “Blues People,” “Somebody Blew Up America,” “Black Music,” and “Dutchman and the Slave.”

He was named New Jersey’s second poet laureate in 2002 but soon became ensnared in a controversy around his poem about 9/11 entitled “Somebody Blew Up America,” which some critics called antisemitic. The post of poet laureate was eliminated before Baraka finished his term.

In 1990, Amiri Baraka wrote, in a preface to “The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader,” “My writing reflects my own growth and expansion, and at the same time the society in which I have existed throughout this longish confrontation. Whether it is politics, music, literature, or the origins of language, there is a historical and time/place/condition reference that will always try to explain exactly why I was saying both how and for what.”